Unintentional Injury Risk in Children with Externalizing Behavior Disorders at Summer Camp

Children with externalizing behavior disorders such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), and conduct disorder (CD) have greatly increased risk of unintentional injury, but it is unclear what mechanisms are responsible for that increased risk. This study followed 22 children participating in a summer camp for children with ADHD. Injury incidents were recorded daily and a set of primary symptoms of behavioral disorders were recorded at 15-min intervals over the course of the 6-week summer camp experience (roughly 300 h of observing each child). We predicted symptoms of ODD and CD would be more strongly related to injury incidence than symptoms of ADHD. Results from univariate Poisson regression models confirmed our prediction. Symptoms of ODD and CD—violations and intentional aggression in particular—were related to injury incidence but symptoms of ADHD were not. This finding is consistent with a growing body of evidence that oppositional, noncompliant, and aggressive behavior patterns might be primarily responsible for increased risk for injury among children with externalizing behavior disorders. Thanks to Sylvie Mrug, Peter Winslett, and the other staff members of the STP camp for their cooperation.     

Asking the Right Questions About g

It is our position that a complete understanding of human intellectual development is of ultimate interest to researchers and of great import to society. In this article, we ask questions that reflect common themes seen in the debate regarding the nature and importance of general cognitive ability (i.e., the g factor), sources of individual and group differences, and the viability of arguments against g theory. We also examine questions reflecting aspects of these debates that are commonly ignored or misconstrued. Our goal is to help researchers and debaters continue or begin to ask clear, critical, and dispassionate questions about g that will stimulate productive research and promote informed public policy.     

The Effects of Leader Communication on a Worker's Intent to Stay: An Investigation Using Structural Equation Modeling

This study presents findings on the link between leader motivating language (ML) use and worker intent to stay. Structural equation modeling indicated that ML use significantly improves worker intent to stay—with a 10% increase in ML leading to an approximate 5% increase in worker intent to stay. Also, analysis showed that the full ML model better describes the data than any partial model based on a subset of the ML components, and this outcome helps advance researchers' understanding of the ML theory. Results indicate that proper leader language use can substantially improve the critical organizational outcome of worker retention. As such, this study identifies potential new paths for requisite leader communication research, training, and development.     

Boundary Disturbances and Eating Disorder Symptoms

Female graduate students in counseling and clinical psychology retrospectively rated maternal and paternal boundaries in their families of origin. Subscales of the Eating Disorders Inventory-3 were used to assess disordered eating, including drive for thinness, body dissatisfaction, bulimia symptoms, and overall risk. Results indicated that maternal enmeshment and maternal psychological control were related to disordered eating. Further, daughters who reported that their mothers shielded them from parents’ conflict and adult concerns were less likely to report drive for thinness or bulimic tendencies. With respect to paternal boundary problems, paternal infantilization (overprotection) was significantly related to daughters’ drive for thinness.     

Experiments on the Automaticity of Political Beliefs and Attitudes

Political science has long relied on explicit responses in order to understand what and how people think. New research in the cognitive sciences suggests that this reliance on conscious considerations provides but a partial picture of how citizens think and reason. Given the limitations of conscious working memory and the growing evidence that much of human cognition occurs outside of awareness, the defining empirical assumption of modern public opinion research—that citizens can tell us what is on their minds—seems increasingly suspect. Moreover, social science is particularly challenged by the sensitivity of their topics, which in turn raises social and personal desirability concerns about self-report data. In order to overcome these limitations, we propose an implicit experimental approach. We contend that implicit measures enable us to measure some of the automatic and affective responses and predispositions that influence thoughts and behaviors outside of conscious awareness.     

Does Psi exist? Lack of replication of an anomalous process of information transfer.

D. J. Bem and C. Honorton (1994) recently presented in this journal a set of ganzfeld extrasensory perception (ESP) experiments conducted by C. Honorton that appeared to support the existence of a communication anomaly. In this article, the authors present a meta-analysis of 30 ganzfeld ESP studies from 7 independent laboratories adhering to the same stringent methodological guidelines that C. Honorton followed. The studies failed to confirm his main effect of participants scoring above chance on the ESP task, Stouffer z = 0.70, p = .24, one-tailed; M effect size (z/N1/2) = 0.013, SD = 0.23. The new studies included replication attempts of 3 out of 5 internal effects reported as statistically significant by D. J. Bem and C. Honorton. Only 1 was confirmed, and the authors found that D. J. Bem and C. Honorton were mistaken in describing the original effect as being statistically significant. The authors conclude that the ganzfeld technique does not at present offer a replicable method for producing ESP in the laboratory.     

Taoism and psychotherapy

An attempt is made in this paper to apply the principals of Taoism to the practice of psychotherapy. The Eastern approach to the nature of experience is described in order for the therapist to become more present for himself as well as for the patient. The relationship of insight to the process of change is explored, contrasting Eastern notions of transcendent liberation to the traditional psychoanalytic model of personal transformation, which has been viewed as curing the patient. Taoist precepts are described, comparing the Eastern view of the enlightened teacher to an ideal therapist. Finally, fifteen Zen tenets are described, as outlined by Holmes and Horioka, with an effort made to relate each tenet to the experience of being a therapist.